District 6: Incumbent Donna Frye cannot run again because of term limits. Candidates are Steven Hadley, Frye's chief of staff; Kim Ngoc T. Tran, a paralegal; Howard Wayne, a former state assemblyman and California deputy attorney general; and Lorie M. Zapf, regional director for California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse.

District 8: Incumbent Ben Hueso is leaving to run for the state Assembly. Candidates are David Alvarez, a district representative for state Sen. Denise Ducheny; Joseph K. Brown, a businessman; Felipe Hueso, a lawyer and the incumbent's brother; Nick Inzunza, a South Bay school board member and retired school psychologist; and Lincoln Pickard, an Internet publisher.

SAN DIEGO — Candidates are lining up to run for San Diego City Council next year, and they include an uncle, a brother and a chief of staff to those who have already held the post.

A mechanical engineer, a paralegal and a former member of the state Assembly also are running.

Fourteen people have filed initial papers to run for four council seats. Several have hired political consultants and started fundraising.

Council members Donna Frye and Ben Hueso will leave office, attracting a lot of interest in their open seats.

Nine candidates, mostly Democrats, intend to run for those two seats. They include Hueso's older brother, Felipe, and Frye's chief of staff, Steven Hadley – who have secured their respective incumbent's endorsements.

Councilmen Kevin Faulconer and Tony Young are seeking re-election and are drawing some opposition.

Political consultant Chris Crotty noted: “Kevin and Tony are going to be very difficult to unseat because of the power of incumbency. They've got name ID, they've got a presence in their district, and most important, they have the ability to raise money.”

District 8

Hueso, finishing his first four-year term, is leaving to run for the state Assembly. His council seat has attracted the most candidates so far, at five.

Two of them have strong name recognition in the district, based on family.

The incumbent's brother is Felipe Hueso, 50, of Sherman Heights, a lawyer specializing in workers' compensation cases. He said a well-known name may not help.

“If anything, it's going to hurt me,” Felipe Hueso said. “People are going to get the sense, 'Why should the brother pass the baton to another brother? '”

The other familiar name is Nick Inzunza, 66, of Nestor, a retired school psychologist who is on the South Bay Union School District board.

He is the uncle of two well-known local brothers – Ralph Inzunza, who resigned from the San Diego City Council after his 2005 conviction on federal corruption charges; and former National City Mayor Nick Inzunza, who dropped out of politics in 2006 after an investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune revealed that he rented substandard housing to poor tenants.

Candidate Inzunza is the brother of their father, Ralph Inzunza Sr., a former San Ysidro school board member and National City councilman.

Inzunza believes his family name is an asset.

Candidate David Alvarez of Logan Heights, 29, is a staffer for state Sen. Denise Ducheny, a Democrat. He lacks a well-known last name, but he has credibility and contacts because of his job as a district representative for Ducheny.

“I think I am going to be able to differentiate myself from some of the old guard, if you will, of politics in the South Bay,” Alvarez said.

Other candidates are Joseph K. Brown of Sherman Heights, 39, a businessman, and Lincoln Pickard of Palm City, 67, who self-publishes several Web sites.

District 8 extends north from Golden Hill and Sherman Heights and south to Otay Mesa and San Ysidro. It leans heavily Democratic – 51 percent of the registered voters are Democrats and 20 percent are Republicans. Pickard is the only Republican among the five running; the rest are Democrats.

District 6

Four candidates – two Democrats and two Republicans – are vying to succeed Frye, who cannot seek re-election because of term limits.

On the Democratic side are Howard Wayne, 60, a state Assemblyman from 1996 to 2002 and a longtime California deputy attorney general, and Hadley, 53, a former pastor with a law degree who has been on Frye's staff since 2001. Both call Clairemont home, but Hadley is a recent transplant from San Marcos.

Frye's popularity among neighborhood groups is expected to give a major boost to Hadley. Wayne also has many community contacts from his days representing the 78th Assembly District.

On the Republican side, the candidates are Kim Ngoc T. Tran of Linda Vista, 56, a paralegal who has twice run unsuccessfully for the state Assembly, and Lorie M. Zapf of Clairemont, 51, a regional director of California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, an organization whose mission is to protect small businesses from frivolous lawsuits. Zapf has been a broadcast journalist and health-food business owner.

District 6, which stretches from Clairemont and Kearny Mesa to Serra Mesa and Mission Valley, is 38 percent Democratic and 32 percent Republican.

“Although party registration is split in that district, it has tended historically to vote relatively conservatively,” political consultant Tom Shepard said.

District 2

Faulconer, a Republican first elected in 2006, is confronting two Democratic challengers: Patrick Finucane of Pacific Beach, 32, a mechanical engineer, and Ian Trowbridge of Mission Hills, 62, a retired scientist turned activist.

Finucane has gained some exposure serving on the Pacific Beach Town Council and being a former president of the San Diego County Young Democrats.

This is Trowbridge's second attempt to win the District 2 seat. He ran unsuccessfully against Faulconer in 2006. In recent years, Trowbridge has been part of a coalition fighting the Navy Broadway project, a downtown waterfront development. Last year, he successfully sued to overturn the severance payment awarded to the fired president of a city redevelopment agency.

About 38 percent of District 2's registered voters are Democrats and about 30 percent are Republicans. District 2 encompasses coastal communities from La Jolla to Point Loma, and extends east to include Old Town, Mission Hills and downtown.

District 4

Young, who took office after a special election in 2005, has drawn one challenger. It's David T. Baltazar of Paradise Hills, 36, an Internet sales manager for a car dealership, who has never run for office. Like Young, he is a Democrat.

District 4 includes Chollas View, Emerald Hills, Encanto, Lincoln Park, South Bay Terrace and North Bay Terrace. Nearly 54 percent of registered voters are Democrats and 21 percent are Republicans.

The City Council election will be June 8, with a runoff Nov. 2 in any district where no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote. The races are nonpartisan, although party politics play a significant role in fundraising and endorsements.